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Book cover for Becoming
For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self.
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Frederick Douglass
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
Frederick Douglass

Anne Tyler
“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
Anne Tyler

Paul Theroux
“Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.”
Paul Theroux

William Faulkner
“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
William Faulkner

Jane Austen
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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Bad Memoirs
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